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Central Desert fire, 23 December 2023 Central Desert, Barkly

Out · last detection 31 Dec 2023, 16:40 UTC

The fire started on 23 December 2023 in Central Desert, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,806 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1202th largest in Northern Territory since 2016 (of 3517 with a page). Number 467 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2019Barkly · 2023Barkly · 2019Barkly · 2023

Burnt area
11,806ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
23 Dec 2023 – 30 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
23 Dec
2023
Heat detections
607
in a single hotspot: 389 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.7GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Dec30 Dec
31 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

24 Dec 2023 · 178 MW · 34 25 Dec 2023 · 1,581 MW · 154 26 Dec 2023 · 2,074 MW · 144 27 Dec 2023 · 8,253 MW · 159 28 Dec 2023 · 223 MW · 38 29 Dec 2023 · 528 MW · 31 30 Dec 2023 · 96 MW · 23 31 Dec 2023 · 324 MW · 24
24 Dec 26 Dec 27 Dec 28 Dec 30 Dec

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

43°high
46km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 7 Jan.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 357 ha in 2018, 102 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.5% of the area of London (118 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Central Desert where it started
    7,891 ha reached on 24 Dec
    0.0 %
  2. Barkly
    4,076 ha reached on 25 Dec
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
23 Dec 40.7 °C 8 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Dec 38.8 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Dec 38.2 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
26 Dec 38.4 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Dec 39.6 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Dec 42.1 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Dec 43.3 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
30 Dec 42.5 °C 11 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
31 Dec after 39.4 °C 7 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
1 Jan after 39.7 °C 7 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
2 Jan after 41.1 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
3 Jan after 40.3 °C 17 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
4 Jan after 37.5 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
5 Jan after 39.8 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
6 Jan after 38.2 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Jan after 34.3 °C 40 % 32 km/h 6.5 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 16 Dec 2023
After · 6 Jan 2024

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 26 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 46 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak46 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1099 µg/m³
Optical depth0.70
2122232425262728293031
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 607Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Central Desert fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 December 2023 to 30 December 2023 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 December 2023 to 28 December 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,806 hectares (118.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Desert (7,891 ha, 0.0 %); Barkly (4,076 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 43.3 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 000 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 December 2023 → 30 December 2023.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 000.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 December 2023 to 28 December 2023. 607 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.